>A 40% increase in the number of deaths in working-age population

Where are you coming up with this number?

Stats provided by a life insurance company, recently mentioned here and /r/covid19

Lol, the person you’re replying to said he’s fully vaccinated, and somehow you’re blaming him for the increase in deaths and hospitalization when the stats clearly show that fully vaccinated people have very low risk of hospitalization, all because he said he doesn’t like masks (and despite that still wears them when required).

COVID hysteria is just an interesting thing.

I’m curious where your friend and his wife live. Where I live we have a 90% vaccination rate, reinstated mask mandates and hospitals full beyond capacity, such that non-covid patients can’t get care. My family and I are all fully vaccinated and we wear masks as required. Yet my son still caught covid in late November and it went through our house. You can rail against those with differing points of view, but in my experience the masks aren’t working on a macro level. They’re not even slowing the infection rate. I’m also tired of the theater and ineffective restrictions.

I seriously don't get this arguement. Vaccines objectively reduce hospitalization rates and disease severity, and uvnaxxed people are 20 times more likely to die. So it's clear that however bad things are, they would be much worse with more unvaxxed people.

So yeah, 100 people not being able to get a hospital bed is different from 2000 people.

I guess I conflated my points. I fully support the vaccination effort and agree that the unvaccinated are placing a disproportionate burden on health care facilities, etc. Indeed, given the dwindling capacity at hospitals, I think we should consider placing the unvaccinated on a lower priority than the vaccinated who have non-covid health care needs.

It’s the masking policies that seem inconsistent and often ridiculous to me. For example, my kids have to wear masks at school all day and while playing on school sports teams. My daughter was forced to wear a mask while running cross country outside last spring, which I found downright cruel. At the same time, the students are all allowed to eat and talk to each other at communal tables in the cafeteria every day. I know school administrators have a lot to juggle, but still. I find these inconsistencies everywhere.

As a member of the vast majority who is lower risk, I’d like to know how much longer I’m expected to accommodate these restrictions (lockdowns, closed facilities, canceled events, failed businesses). It’s been a long time and covid isn’t going away. New variants will continue to emerge. Are we really supposed to go on like this indefinitely? Living with a heightened state of public fear? Is it reasonable and good public policy to base all decisions on one factor, to the detriment of all other social and public concerns? I guess maybe I’m going too far, but I’m tired of living like this, and typing into the void makes it feel like someone is listening.